Everquest Next Developers Allow All Class / Race Combinations

Though the EQN developers understand the importance of lore restrictions, the long term health of the game needs freedom.

In the latest Round Table discussion, the developers at SOE approached the topic subject of Class and Race restrictions, and how they would influence Everquest Next in terms of lore and mechanics. They also discussed how those restrictions would influence player choices later in the game. Though both the developers and the fans prefer certain restrictions based on the game's lore (40% of voters agreed with this position), Everquest Next will still feature unlimited class / race options due to the long term benefits that the freedom will provide.

"Philosophically, we were very much in line with what the votes that the players put forward...Unfortunately, when we started developing the game we realized we wanted to create a situation where players were never forced to make a decision they would later regret based on knowledge they didn't have at that stage in their careers...It could later on restrict your faction choices, and then you would find that out, late in the game, after you had created that character and leveled them up, that you've backed yourself into a corner. And we had effectively, as a development team, allowed you to create a character that you didn't feel was viable."

Terry Michaels, the senior producer of Everquest Next also joined in the conversation, arguing:

"In our game, with the fact that we've already announced we will have at least forty classes, and with the multiclassing, when you chose your race and class at the beginning of the game, as you chose that race, you might have to understand every ability out there, and every item in the world, to be able to make a choice if we did allow race and class restrictions."

Despite their clear hesitance about the inclusion of this level of freedom, the developers at SOE have clearly put a lot of thought into how this will impact both the long and short-term health of Everquest Next. The developers don't want to pidgeon-hole their players into builds that they didn't initially set out to play, not do they want to force players to spend hours reading up on the choices they're making for hours during character creation. If you want to see the other topics up for debate in Everquest Next, check out the Round Table page. To see the full discussion that led to EQN accepting all class / race combinations, check out their round table discussion in the video below.